RB Recently I've had very little time for chess. If you don't play, your game suffers. This sad and simple fact was brought home to me when I started losing badly to my sparring partner of 30 years Vince, despite Vince having had triple bypass surgery and being doped up on all kinds of pain-killing medication. Deadlines met, for the most part, I decided to do a little studying.

Against 1 e4 Vince often plays the Sicilian Dragon. One of White's typical strategies against the Dragon is to hurl the kingside pawns against the enemy king. This got me thinking about pawn storms in general and then I remembered the stunning game Mariotti-Gligoric – not a Sicilian Dragon, admittedly, but a King's Indian (the tenuous link being Black's fianchettoed bishop).

At the time the game was played, Gligoric was a leading expert on the King's Indian and so Mariotti was laying down a challenge. He did this in bold style, choosing the aggressive Four Pawns Attack. Indeed, by advancing his g-pawn he had created what might be called a five pawns attack. In this position, I would look at 1 g5, driving away a kingside defender and after 1…Nd7 (or 1…Ne8), follow it up with 2 h4. But I'd also be anxious about my king's safety: the queen's bishop can go to e3, but it's going to be hard to move the queen out of the way to allow the king to castle long because it's needed to protect the g4-pawn. So, what to do?

Well, Mariotti turned his five pawns attack into a six pawns attack – 1 h4. Is this sound? Possibly not, but in such positions the defender has to be accurate. Gligoric struck back in the centre with 2…Nd4 and play went: 2 h5 d5 3 e5 Ne4 4 hxg6 hxg6 5 Qd3. Gligoric must have assumed the attack was just too speculative and continued 5…b5 6 Nxe4 bxc4. Mariotti then went for the direct 7 Qh3, when, after many adventures, he pressed home his attack. As we'll see over the next few weeks, pawn storms aren't for the faint-hearted.